…Here’s a picture of my Mom opening her birthday present from me: a portrait of Lehigh. Her actual birthday is today, but we got together yesterday and had fish and chips at the Atlantic Avenue Chipshop. The family being from New England , we’re all pretty picky about our F&C. The horrid practice of breading fish to deep fry it is a constant source of sorrow for me.

Mom liked the drawing, and she and my sister and I all liked the deep fried mac and cheese. I’m very glad to get the chance to spend more time with my mother. I can even tease her about voting Republican.

A photo edited on my eeepc – the computer that I enabled advanced desktop mode on and added “The Gimp” to. I’m learning just the tiniest bit about Linux. Oooo, open source software; I feel so clean and geeky. It also means that I’m that much closer to making this little laptop into the easy blog machine I hoped for.

In other exciting news, ICP is planning on reprints of all of Weegee’s early books – some of my favorite photobooks ever.

In other not exciting news, the hot water is still out in my apartment. It’s been way too long, and the question is do I run a bath to night to give the water a chance to get room temperature for my ablutions tomorrow morning?

Tom at the train station in Rhinecliff. It was the writing assignments in his class that got me back into the written word again after years of avoidance.